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^^L A   B E L L E   E P O Q U E   I V: 
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^^Historical context:
After the Franco-German war in 1870/71, Europe enjoyed a period of interior peace for more than forty years until the start of the First World War in 1914. During this period, many important social and technological developments took place. The second wave of the industrial revolution seized the world which gave birth to the New Imperialism. People living in this period were materially confident and culturally optimistic. All social classes were seized by the feeling of a new start into better times. So began, on this basis, the time which nowadays not only the French call the 'La Belle Epoque' (The Beutiful Era).
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^^Scenario Situation, September 1905:
In Asia The Treaty of Portsmouth, mediated by Theodore Roosevelt, brought peace between Russia and Japan, and establised Japan as a new Great Power. Russia agreed to evacuate Manchuria and recognize Korea as part of the Japanese sphere of influence. Russia also lost access to warm water ports for it's navy and during the course of war lost virtually its entire Eastern and Baltic fleet.
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On the other side of the world the old rivals of France and Great Britain has aligned themselves as the Entente Cordiale, to better co-ordinate their imperial abitions and to ward off a challenge from Germany. And for now, everything is calm in the US, Italy and the Ottoman Empire.
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